


Yet Again The World Sets In

by thinkpink20



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-23
Updated: 2012-02-23
Packaged: 2017-10-31 15:45:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/345812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thinkpink20/pseuds/thinkpink20
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock goes without.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Yet Again The World Sets In

**Author's Note:**

> Set during the period Sherlock is going cold turkey; Mycroft is staying with him and neither are very sure how it will turn out...

Sherlock is dreaming.

Or perhaps not dreaming, because these things were once real. Instead he is more _remembering,_ in chronic, hallucinogenic detail. 

The current scene is a bathtub, ceramic and ornate standing on four firm feet. There are church bells ringing somewhere in the distance, either calling people in or sending them home, but he ignores all that. He remembers a heavy dislike of organised religion, even at that age.

For he is four, you see - in the dream. He is stepping into the bath water that Mycroft has just vacated, wondering idly why they do these things - he has heard of poorer nations where there is a need to conserve water, but that's certainly not the case here. Maybe he should speak to Mummy about it, he decides - in this dream. Yes, Mummy will know.

For now he gets in, letting Nanny help him. He is aware that there's something slightly disgusting about sharing bath water, but that's more his dreaming self; the four year old Sherlock would never have had any thoughts about these things.

Then suddenly the scene changes and Sherlock is eight, lying in his bed dying from 'flu. Of course he's not _really_ dying, but eight year olds (and twenty three year olds) are dramatic and he believes it, utterly and firmly.

He remembers telling Mycroft, secretly and covertly when he comes in to read to him, that he's seen a prophet standing at the end of the bed, telling him the end is nigh. Older Sherlock observes this in the dream/memory and recalls fourteen year old Mycroft's pudgy hands (before he shot up, before his height evened out his weight a little) folding around his.

"It's a hallucination, Sherlock, from your temperature. There is no prophet, I promise you."

Sherlock remembers ( _feels_ the memory, which is an odd sort of thing to do) believing that. The infused sense of comfort comes over him and his real life self - his grown up self - relaxes for a moment.

Then another stab of pain in his gut wakes him, and the bubble of comfort bursts instantly.

Sherlock curls his fingers into the soft flesh of his palm and concentrates on breathing. Which is hard to do, really, when you're shaking as much as he is.

By his own reckoning this is roughly the period of time where he will begin begging for a shot of cocaine. Or - well, anything really. He took a pen and wrote it down (back when his hand was steady enough to hold a damn pen, of course) in order to gauge when he would be at his most vulnerable, and this period of five to seven days has been neatly plotted out in red ink and is now posted up on the fridge. There are five copies of it, for when Sherlock inevitably tears it down in anger. He had predicted this too. So far they're only one copy down.

He grits his teeth as another spasm of pain wracks his abdomen and glances across at Mycroft, sitting calmly in his seat opposite. He is reading The Times, the financial section if Sherlock's summation is right. 

Mycroft coughs gently in the back of his throat to indicate that he is aware Sherlock is awake again, but he does not make eye contact. 

He too is aware that this is the period in which Sherlock is most likely to beg. It's not easy for either of them.

"Would you like a drink of something?" Mycroft asks, as though they're at one of Mummy's garden parties. Sherlock fights a violent wave of nausea and manages to shake his head. Mycroft continues reading.

The dream comes back to him suddenly, and Sherlock wonders why the hell he is dreaming of Mycroft's bath water, or of anything from his past at all, in fact. He tends to delete such unimportant trivia, and rarely has time for indulging reminiscences. Possibly he feels vulnerable, thus vulnerable times are coming back to him, but there are only so many levels of his own weakness that Sherlock can engage with and he's positively full up at the moment, so he shuts that thought down.

Another wave of stomach rolling, mouth watering and he grits his teeth. It has been several years since he's been physically ill - since he was a child - and he does not want to start now, in front of Mycroft. By sheer force of will, Sherlock calms his stomach and concentrates on the tremor in his hand.

"I think I need - "

"Yes," Mycroft says loudly, cutting him off. There is an out-of-place stillness in the moment of desperation as he calmly turns the page of his paper. "I'm aware of what you think you need, Sherlock." Then he looks up. "Let's say no more of it, hmm?"

He feels like picking up the nearest thing (a vase, a paperweight) and throwing it at Mycroft's head. For a second Sherlock imagines the consternation but he cannot hold the image for long, the gnawing, aching want in his veins distracts him.

"I'm going to bed," he says, trying to sound as sensible as possible. Normal. _Normality._ He even craves normality at this moment.

"Do you need a hand?" Mycroft asks, looking up again, face impassive.

"Piss off," Sherlock replies, all the vitriol of addiction in his voice, and Mycroft simply looks away. He wouldn't accept help at this very moment even if he found himself sprawled on the floor.

Mycroft and his pathetic, boring, annoying _restraint._

Sherlock sits and then stands with the most grace he can muster and walks calmly into his bedroom. Behind him, he slams the door.

The second he gets down on the bed, he passes out.

\----------

He's dreaming again; this time it's when Mummy caught him sleeping in Mycroft's bed when he was five.

"It's just not very _grown up,_ Sherlock. Only little boys do such things - you're not a little boy anymore, are you?"

"No, Mummy."

"Well then, do desist, darling."

The want in the black of the night to just get up and crawl down the hall is unbearable. At five he no longer believes in monsters or ghosts, but he can't sleep and Mycroft is his reading partner, he lets him leave the light on whilst he snores and it's _comforting._ Sherlock detests this need for comfort in himself, yet it persists.

He lies in the dark trying to will it out of himself, this pathetic need.

When he wakes up, he is still twenty three and still sweating and shaking and uncomfortably sore. All over. He wants to be a baby again.

"Where is the bucket?" He asks calmly, because he knows Mycroft will be in the room somewhere with him. The answer comes from closer than he expected, over his shoulder on the bed beside him. He sounds taut and fractured.

"On the floor beside you."

Sherlock leans over and vomits, copiously. 

It's water, mainly, but it's like his stomach has forgotten how to stop heaving and he retches five, six times before he finally feels it's safe enough to lie back down. He feels hot and burning, the way you do after being sick. It's a feeling he had forgotten.

When he lies back he realises Mycroft is in his pyjamas next to him, book in hand. It's like a scene from his dream.

"Are you alright?" Mycroft asks, eyes purposefully glued to the text in front of him, as though all of these bodily functions going on around him are deplorable.

_"Peachy."_ Sherlock answers, sharp and bitter. He can still taste stomach acid on his tongue. 

Then after a second - "You were talking."

This makes Sherlock look up. He remembers thinking about lying in his own bedroom, swirls of pattern on the ceiling where here there is none. He wonders what he possibly could have said.

"If I'm disturbing you, do feel free to leave."

This is stupid. He knows that Mycroft will not leave him (another thing they spoke about, when Sherlock put the list up on the fridge) and that he would be severely handicapped without someone here to help him, especially over the next forty eight hours when things are set to get (he shudders) worse. 

Mycroft finally looks away from his Agatha Christie ( _Crooked House_ \- Sherlock desperately tries to remember what happens in that one) and looks down at him. His eyes are painfully expressive; he looks tired and worn and _worried._ "Take a drink of water, sip it slowly."

When Sherlock drags himself into a sitting position, he finds his fingers won't work correctly on the glass (shaking too much, how dignified) and Mycroft leans across him to get it. Between them, they raise it up long enough for Sherlock to drink. It tastes bland, empty.

"Could you eat anything?" Mycroft asks. He smoothes a piece of hair away from the damp sweat on Sherlock's forehead and the intimate gesture undoes something strange inside him. For a second, Sherlock has to hold himself very still incase he goes to pieces. 

This was something he didn't expect, emotions as well as physical discomfort. It is an unknown finding. The observer in him catalogues this, files it away.

Eventually, "No, I wouldn't keep it down."

"Then lie down again, try to sleep."

When he is curled back on his side, foetal and small, Sherlock feels the weight on the bed shift and Mycroft's familiar feet padding across the cold, polished boards. Through squinted eyes he sees him appear by the bedside, pick up the bowl and carry it out.

Sherlock feels disgusting.

\---------

This time he is swimming.

The pool is open-aired and warm, sunlight glinting off the surface of the water as he moves through it. The sky is blue, so blue that it hurts his eyes when he attempts a little backstroke.

On the sun-cracked bricks beside him, Mycroft is reading a report. This moment of the dream allows him to remember that the report was about Sweden, but Sherlock doesn't know why. He must have stored the data for a reason, though he can't recall it now.

"Did you hear them shouting last night?" Sherlock asks, feeling the cool gleam of the metal ladder in his hand as he rests on a step. Mycroft ignores him and Sherlock smacks a hand through the water, guaging the splash upwards.

"Sherlock!"

Mycroft now has water droplets hanging from the end of that regal nose. Sherlock refuses to believe his is shaped quite that unpleasantly.

"You were ignoring me," Sherlock says, leaning back against the handles of the pool ladder behind him. He reaches out for a cigarette and lights it, blowing the smoke into the humid, Mediterranean air.

"Yes, of course I did; I heard Mummy, at least."

Sherlock takes a sharp drag in, catches Mycroft's eyes as he exhales. "I can't remember the last time I heard them argue."

"They're very happy," Mycroft defends, as though it's his place. He dabs the water droplets off his report with the edge of his shirt. He's so annoying, Sherlock thinks, but registers a kick of wanting at the same time.

"Are you ever going to get in the water?"

Mycroft merely glares at him, eyes full of unnamed warnings. Sherlock is less affected by this than he used to be.

"Don't you have a secretary to read through that rubbish for you?"

And this time Mycroft sighs, loudly. "Drowning is such an unpleasant way to die, Sherlock."

Sherlock smirks at him, then stubs out his cigarette on the pale, concrete edge around the pool. He marshals the rogue elements of his body that have been stirred watching Mycroft recline in the sun and hauls himself out of the pool. He is dripping on the bricks as he crosses the short distance but he is nineteen now and he knows the shape his body cuts with the sun illuminating behind it. And he knows what this does to Mycroft.

As the leans down, pool water dripping down over his brother's expensive shirt bought especially for the holiday, Sherlock feels a sudden shock of vulnerability.

He pauses an inch away from Mycroft's lips. 

Their eyes are open, looking at each other intently and Sherlock can feel the foreign but familiar breath on his face sparking lust in his stomach. His body goes tight and ready with want.

He watches Mycroft's eyes carefully to see if they dart to the villa behind them, to see who is watching. They don't. It's satisfying.

And then Mycroft raises his mouth, kisses him sharply.

It is brazen and hungry and Sherlock wonders how long he's been watching him in the pool, how much of that report he's really been seeing. It doesn't feel dangerous, it just feels _right._

And he doesn't feel vulnerable anymore.

\----------

This time when he wakes, it is dark outside. 

Days no longer matter, Sherlock realises, as he looks at the clock on the wall opposite the bed. It says three am, but what three am that is, he couldn't say.

Mycroft is beside him, snoring gently. Sherlock has the sharp and sudden urge to creep out and leave. He knows where there is money, deep in the pocket of Mycroft's coat (emergency money, so _cautious_ and _careful)_ and he could be back before Mycroft wakes.

He'd never know, he'd never be any wiser.

But of course he _would._ And then Sherlock remembers the locked door, the posting of the keys back through the letterbox to be picked up by one of those petite little secretaries of his.

They're stuck here together, Sherlock realises, in this ungodly hell.

He feels like raging, all of a sudden, and gets up to go into the living room to smash the nearest thing he can find but his legs are shaking too much when he goes to set them down, so he stops.

This is how Mycroft finds him, when he wakes a moment later - sitting on the side of the bed like a weary old man.

"Do you feel sick?"

"Piss off."

"Sherlock, do you need - "

"Piss off."

There is a crackled, horrible static noise and Sherlock realises he must be the only one hearing it because the room is silent. His thoughts are so loud he feels like they're deafening him and his head is _banging_ with the weight of them all trying to get out.

He's like a radio that someone has left untuned.

"If you've got any hidden on you anywhere, any hidden around the house Mycroft, then this is the time to - "

"There's none," Mycroft says calmly. He is being honest; Sherlock knows the very tick of his voice when he's lying his way out of something.

"Perhaps we should try this again another time, when I'm a little bit stronger, when - "

"No."

"If I have some now, then - "

"Then it will be worse, at some point."

Sherlock _hates_ Mycroft. He has possibly always hated him, even since they were children. He wishes he were an only child or - better than that - not a human at all with all these thoughts and wants and _itches_ running through his skin.

"If you just get me some - "

"Sherlock."

A kiss on the back of his neck, small and careful and precise seems to wake him up. Maybe it's because they never kiss one another like that, like a warning, like a comfort. They don't kiss like a couple. They aren't one.

The sensation of it, on his skin, gives Sherlock the next few pieces of track - because that's what he feels like, like a train careering towards the unfinished end of the line where the track stops. Mycroft's kiss gives him another few pieces of track.

It feels illogical but true.

"Chess," Mycroft says. "You can set the stakes."

Sherlock thinks of the most absurd amount he can think of. "Five thousand pounds."

Mycroft sighs. "Fine, five thousand pounds."

"Fine," Sherlock repeats, and lets himself be helped up from the bed.

\-------

The first thought he has when he opens his eyes is - I bet he's got some somewhere, he's just not telling me.

I _bet_ he has.

And then -

Oh. This is the paranoia.

It's all quite perfunctory, Sherlock thinks, as though he's strong enough to be outside it, as though he could rise above it.

But of course he can't. He's lying sweating and shaking in his bed and he has four blankets on top of his duvet and a hot water bottle that Mycroft brought him in the night. He still can't get warm. 

Mycroft has removed himself to the chair by the window after Sherlock threatened to roll his 'fat, ugly, swollen body out of bed' in the darkness.

They have, Sherlock knows, recovered from worse. 

Watching Mycroft sleep calmly, undisturbed by clawing fingers scratching at his brain, at his _veins,_ Sherlock gets up unsteadily and goes into the kitchen to tear the condescending, patronising piece of paper down off the fridge. He hardly recognises his own handwriting.

What did that creature know, anyway? The one not ravaged, the one who was _perfectly fine_ with his abuses and his dependencies. 

Then he spends fifteen minutes throwing up in the sink.

\-------

Time starts to lose meaning as well as days. 

First it crawls, hands moving around the face of the clock like little ants, turning to minute little black dots before his eyes and then coalescing again. 

Then it rages, passing hours on end in blackened, uncomfortable states with varying degrees of squalor. He wakes twice on the bathroom floor, not sure how he got there, knowing only that that was not sleep. He comes to once on the bed with Mycroft leaning over him, the most frightening look of fear in his eyes. Sherlock hated the both of them in that particular moment.

He also starts to spend patches of time curled in on himself, black little patches where his thoughts dip to places he deletes as soon as he is able. He feels like he has become some sort of black little imp scratching at the corners of his own mind, thoughts so loud inside his head that at one point he presses his hands down over his ears until Mycroft removes them calmly, slowly and gives him water.

He plots his escape, his demise, his triumph and his glory. He in turn hates, feels pity, disgust and horror.

Never before has living with himself been _this_ hard.

Living with Mycroft, he realises, is easy by comparison.

\-------

When it's dark and he can't sleep for the life of him because he's been asleep so much in the day, Mycroft reads to him. 

Sherlock feels like a five year old again.

It's comforting.

\-------

When Mycroft goes for a shower, Sherlock attempts to unpick the five locks on the door.

He only gets to number three by the time Mycroft is there, over his shoulder.

They play five games of chess in a row, after that.

\-------

Then one morning, Sherlock opens his eyes and realises he's warm.

The body beside him is still and sleeping and when he pushes his calf against Mycroft's thigh, he feels the warmth leaking through the cotton of their pyjamas.

It's like a prayer.

\-------

When Mycroft wakes, he puts Sherlock in the shower.

They haven't washed - just washed - together since they were both young, and it feels odd. Sherlock watches him as he soaps up the delicate patches of skin at his neck and navel and back and realises he no longer feels vulnerable.

It's a relief.

He just lets himself be washed, feels Mycroft's fingers on him and knows that although there's nothing there _now,_ there will be soon.

That worried him, he realises. It's quite odd. He never thought he'd worry about losing anything, not even the dependent quieting of his own mind he has just lost.

In the shower, Sherlock reaches out and runs a testing, careful hand up Mycroft's side and feels him shiver underneath the touch.

It hasn't gone for him either, then.

That's good.

\-------

Mycroft makes him toast. 

Sherlock keeps it down and is silently, ecstatically pleased with himself.

\-------

It is a Thursday. 

Sherlock knows this because somehow the days have come back to him.

Mycroft has finished _Crooked House_ and is now onto _The Hound Of Death._ It's suddenly much more annoying that Mycroft prefers Christie to him.

"You owe me precisely thirteen thousands pounds at chess."

Mycroft looks up from his book, doubtful.

"I shall keep it as payment for everything you broke of mine as a child."

"I had a healthy habit of needing to know how things worked."

Mycroft raises one eyebrow. "Are you sure about your use of tense, there?"

Sherlock smirks at him.

"Is there a crossword we can do?"

Mycroft glances back at his book, eyes scanning the words lazily. "You threw all the crossword books on the fire on Monday. You thought they were _talking_ to you."

Sherlock doesn't recall this at all. Possibly for the best.

"Perhaps you could fill me in on that Intelligence memo that was delivered to you by your minion earlier, then?"

Mycroft looks even more doubtful than previously but sets down his book. "Perhaps you could _deduce_ the contents."

Sherlock catches on immediately. "Give me... three key words." And this time it is Mycroft's turn to smirk.

They spend the next three hours locked in a battle of wits.

\-------

When Sherlock wakes up, his sleep has been mercifully dreamless.

He is in bed, but the fading light outside tells him it is early evening. Thursday is not yet done, then. Mycroft is lying beside him, though his eyes aren't closed in sleep. Meditation, then. He's always been lazy enough to lie or sit around for hours on end, not moving.

That kind of thing drives Sherlock to -

Well, to going in search of a distraction.

"You must have lost at least a stone."

Mycroft's eyes don't open. Sherlock enjoys the minutiae movement of his features. "I wasn't the one emptying my stomach at alarming intervals."

Sherlock turns on his side until he's facing his brother. In silence, their legs tangle together fiercely. The rush is heady.

"You haven't been eating either."

"I ate sparsely, but every day. Nothing warm or of strong smell, to avoid turning your stomach further."

Sherlock appreciates the significance of that. "Mummy will say you're worryingly thin."

"Me?" Mycroft asks, and when his eyes open Sherlock is momentarily shocked by the blue. 

"She always says _I'm_ worryingly thin. She often fears taking you over weak bridges."

Mycroft doesn't smile, but somehow something happens to his eyes. Sherlock maps the reactions out, one by one. It pleases him. Rarely is anyone ever as fascinating as Mycroft. "Ah, back to your old self, I see."

"Relieved?"

There is a very long heartbeat and then Mycroft speaks. _"Immensely."_

Sherlock kisses him solidly, like he'd forgotten how to do it, like it was the first thing he wanted to learn again when he came round. Mycroft pulls him in (no more gently than before) and traces fingers over the places on Sherlock's body he likes most - that freckle on his neck, the hollow dip of his spine, the sensitive skin on the back of his thigh. Sherlock finds himself shivering again, but for a very different reason.

He pushes down against him and Mycroft reaches up, sliding hands into the curls of his hair, thumbs ghosting over the bridges of his ears. It feels like worship, and Sherlock never feels it is anything less than wholly warranted.

His body has felt like a disadvantage, like the beginning and ending of everything painful. 

Finally, he feels glad of it again.


End file.
